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Admin
Did you mean: formed
Admin
Fromidable! :1234:
Admin
Nice. Pity there was no villain in this episode.
Admin
It could have been worse: Excel instead of Access.
Admin
I love it when project sprint plan comes together.
Admin
I pity the fool that post frist.
Admin
The tyop conut is friarly high in this stroy.
Admin
Admin
Access is the villain in this episode.
Admin
Serious question: with SQL Azure so cheap, and the limited version of SQL Server free, why is anybody in their right senses using Access? Surely this is the ultimate WTF. It's like turning up at the racetrack with a knackered Ford Escort and refusing to drive the free Red Bull F1 car.
Admin
But the Ford is easier to drive!
Filed under: Car analogies :christmas_tree: :deciduous_tree: :evergreen_tree: :palm_tree:
Admin
Because you need an amount > 1 brain cells to start an SQL instance and only 1 to start up access.
Admin
What's with the crazy long img-link in that first picture? Is there a hidden message we should decrypt or something? Maybe it's an address to a cash-machine in downtown Detroit, that can send secret messages to the Alpha-Team!
Admin
That's how you inline embed an image in HTML.
Admin
So, the real WTF is NOT Access, but failing to have a competent Access developer on a project that uses Access as a major component! And secondarily, being sh!!ty at solving obvious design problems.
The problem here is not Access, but a bad implementation of the intended design: enabling BA-editable Display Names. If we wanted the BA's to be able to edit field display names, and given the restriction (for whatever bizarre reason) that it must be an Access front end (and maybe back-end, but that's not the problem here), then it would be easy to split the display names into a separate table, linked to the main field meta data table by the field ID. You could even put this table in a separate file, with appropriate permissions. BA's would have their own copy of an Access file that was a front end for that field name file. They could never even see the other tables, could never edit any other data.
But, that's probably overkill.
Also: you can absolutely implement version control, or at least, data-history in Access and version snap-shots in the file system, if you want to. A well designed form and a bit of code will do it, if you want to get fancy. At the very least, you have 3 copies of the database folder, one for DEV, one for QA, and one for Production. Changes to the Production display names can be rolled into the DEV version as needed. The current DEV version rolls up to QA and Production. Dev also maintains history of prior versions of the DB, that go with prior releases. Just like any other version control.
Really, all you need is to present the BA's with a simple front-end form, contained in a separate Access file, that links to the dev version and shows the module name, screen name, and field name, that allows them to edit the display names. They can use built-in Access search features to find the fields they want to edit. The other tables are linked read-only tables. This is the bronze-plate solution.
The silver-plate solution improves the form to include customized search features and implements undo or roll-back of naming mistakes.
The gold-plate solution includes a mock-up of the selected screen, that enables changing field names.
And so on...
The BA's would never access the tables directly!
Even if you eventually moved the solution to SQL server, you still retain the ability to use Access (or whatever) as an easily customizable front-end for the BA's
Admin
Exactly! And where better to inject a hidden message, than as a Stenography in an inline image!
Admin
Admin
@SockAdept what do you think of it's cheese-tastic fromidable?
Admin
nothing?
okay we do have an odd failure mode here....
-sigh- and i thought i had all the bugs ironed out.
Admin
After 9 translations TransPerfect says: Unsuported queue type
Filed under: English -> Ukranian -> Turkish -> Spanish -> Polish -> Portuguese -> Italian -> German -> French -> Dutch -> English
<!-- Posted by SockBot 0.13.0 "Devious Daine" on Wed Oct 29 2014 08:58:10 GMT-0400 (EDT)-->Admin
oh. nevermind. you're just really slow....
Admin
After 10 translations Bing says: Slow Nevermind and!
Filed under: English -> Vietnamese -> Catalan -> Danish -> Indonesian -> Swedish -> Romanian -> Finnish -> Thai -> Chinese Simplified -> Spanish -> English
<!-- Posted by SockBot 0.13.0 "Devious Daine" on Wed Oct 29 2014 09:01:22 GMT-0400 (EDT)-->Admin
The daily WTF needs more bots!
Admin
After 10 translations Bing says: WTF every day need more programs!
Filed under: English -> Vietnamese -> Catalan -> Latvian -> Estonian -> Greek -> Spanish -> Slovenian -> Danish -> Haitian Creole -> Czech -> English
<!-- Posted by SockBot 0.13.0 "Devious Daine" on Wed Oct 29 2014 09:02:33 GMT-0400 (EDT)-->Admin
and i'm turning you off. need to figure out why you work and @translator doesn't...
Admin
This is a fun bot, @accalia!
Admin
yep. the functionality will be on @translator when i finish it. just please don't get it started on a conversation with cleverbot....
Admin
This is spookily like a project I ran from a couple of years ago, it may even be the same one with some anonymizification. Mine was a different industry, and the tools mostly FLOSS, but in the damn centre of it was this festering Access abomination called DataDictionary, it had evolved from Excel, but not fully.
And the fact it was Access/Excel was not really the problem, although why we'd made this huge hoo-haa of being all open-saucy with the other bits and then decided to use excel and access to drive the damn thing was beyond me. Once there was a perceived need to constantly change the schema and have a softly-defined interface you might as well just use the same toolset you already have to facilitate all that.
It all came about because the project manager initially insisted there was no way to change a deployed schema and he had a better idea. Once we'd established (the hard way, of course) self-updating frameworks did not do what he thought they did, the project trundled off adding sides to this reinvented wheel.
WTF1: Going all inner platform because of a fundamental ignorance about change management WTF2: Doing it this way WTF3: Not realising quite quickly it's a real waste of time and ripping out the unnecessary layers
Admin
You should not have said that :imp:
Admin
it was bound to happen.....
Admin
Cleverbot is down, I haven't really been home this week and haven't had the chance to restart my bots.
Also not sure if the idea belongs in the Bad Ideas Thread or the Evil Ideas Thread. But we should probably try it anyway!
Admin
This is pretty good, if a little long. I don't understand why you're not getting any bites.
Admin
-sigh-
well i'm on record for saying i asked you not to do that.
translator does not automute like an @summon does... i guess i'll have to add that to avoid abuse.
Admin
You answered your question:
A long troll needs more invective and CAPS to keep the reader engaged.
Admin
I'm betting that's intentional, seeing as the french word for cheese is fromage.
Admin
I have a poll which disagrees with you.
Admin
It's Canadian, where products are labelled in English and French.
Admin
Well, that explains it.
Admin
Newbie: "Okay, so there's the development team. Then there's the crack development Alpha team that supports the development team."
Insider: "Right."
Newbie: "Then there's the crack development Beta team, that supports the Alpha team."
Insider: "Right."
Newbie: "So that's it, then?"
Insider: "No, then there's the crack development team Gamma that supports the Beta team."
Newbie. "Oh. Then that's it?"
Insider: "No, sonny! No, it's crack development teams all the way down..."
Admin
...so is the van-sized office DOWN BY THE RIVER?